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Rev. James King Appointed to Direct Campus Ministry at Notre Dame

Published: March 21, 2012

Author: Michael O. Garvey

Rev. James B. King, C.S.C., religious superior of Holy Cross priests and brothers at Notre Dame, has been appointed director of the University of Notre Dame’s Office of Campus Ministry by Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, C.S.C., vice president for student affairs, effective April 2.

King, who is also a trustee and fellow of the University, has ministerial responsibility for the 60 Holy Cross religious at Notre Dame. Before his appointment to that position in 2010, he had served for seven years as rector of the Sorin College residence hall.

As director of Campus Ministry, King will oversee a staff of some 30 clerical, religious and lay ministers tending to the spiritual needs of all Notre Dame students. He will replace Rev. Joseph Carey, C.S.C., campus minister and priest in residence at Notre Dame, who has served as interim director of Campus Ministry since August 2010.

“The work of Campus Ministry is at the heart of a Notre Dame experience that seeks to educate and integrate the student’s heart with their mind,” said Doyle. “Father King has given almost his entire service as a priest to serving and developing young men and women. The Notre Dame community will be blessed by his zeal, his wisdom and his vision.”

As the division responsible for pastoral care and sacramental life on campus, the Office of Campus Ministry has a central role in the Catholic mission of the University. While Campus Ministry will remain integrated in the Office of Student Affairs and maintain a reporting line to that office, the director will report to the Office of the President to recognize both its role in the life of our students and in the mission of the University as a whole.

A native of Chicago, King graduated from Notre Dame in 1981, entered Moreau Seminary, and earned a master of divinity degree from the University in 1987.

Ordained a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross the following year, he spent two years as an assistant rector and freshman seminar instructor at Notre Dame before leaving for the University of Wisconsin, where he earned a master’s degree in political science in 1992.

He served for five years at the University of Portland as a history instructor, rector and assistant director in the alumni office and for one year as director of Portland’s foreign study program in Salzburg, Austria. He returned to Notre Dame in 1997 and served as director of vocations for the Indiana Province of Holy Cross from 1997 to 2005.

King will continue in his role as religious superior and as associate director of the Holy Cross Mission Center, which supports the Congregation’s work overseas. He has taught business ethics in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business and a course in theology for the University’s master of divinity program. He also is the author of “Known by Name: Inside the Halls of Notre Dame,” an autobiographical account of his ministry to Notre Dame students.